Did some stuff to it over the weekend. Changed the oil, the ATF, the brake fluid... will do coolant with water pump when I do timing belt (still waiting on the tools for that job).

All in all, I cannot complain......

I think this old van is going to love you. All of the maintenance that has been neglected will get done. You are correct about cars in the desert. There are a lot of old cars here that probably would have rusted apart long ago in other parts of the country. With no moisture (or any kind) for most of the year, almost nothing rusts here. The biggest problem here is dry rot. For example, I replaced my wiper blades a few weeks ago. They had almost no wear (they were turned on maybe 6 times in three years), but they were literally falling apart from dry rot. The seals in the shocks have probably rotted away. I hope this old van serves you well.

Finally got the new timing belt on. The old one actually didn't look too bad, better than I thought it would. Can still read the writing on it, but the tooth side was starting to separate a bit. Replaced the air filter, the spark plugs, and removed the Brand X cap & rotor that were on there. New G11 coolant, new Billy shocks, touched up some of the undercoating, fixed a minor coolant leak on a flange with a new o-ring.

This Eurovan will be for sale soon. My new Sprinter arrives this week.

It has been a faithful, trusty workhorse these last few years. Hate to see it go, but just need something bigger.

Good news! Your long awaited Sprinter is actually going to show up. Now all you need to do is to find someone else who could use a Eurovan with a chair lift, or are you planning to move the chair lift to the Sprinter?

Sprinter will be getting a new rear-entry lift. The Ricon chain lift in the Eurovan is long since obsoleted. It works OK as it is, but wouldn't really be something you could or want to go through the effort to move to a new vehicle.

Unfortunately it may take a couple months to source funding for the Sprinter's outfitting. The lift and dual chair anchor points will be around $10k . Variety Club is supposed to be helping with that, but there is a waiting list.

That'll give me time to get the rear seats out save for the most forward, install a trailer hitch and wiring, and do a couple other minor things to it. As it turns out, I am NOT getting the one I ordered, since MB cannot seem to get any hard timeline on the build. The most recent estimate was March for allocation, and that means it could still take a month or more beyond that. So who knows when I will get it, and I originally placed the order LAST March. So I am buying a new-but-unsold 2016 that is slightly fancier than what I wanted. But, since it took so long I missed any chance to get my custom built 2016, and some of the stuff I did NOT want (and this 2016 I am buying has) was made standard on the 2017... so I'd have been stuck with it anyway. They are giving me a pretty good deal on it though, only costing about $1k more and it has about $5k more equipment.

They are coming from Argentina, starting in 2016. However the plant there has been building current model Sprinters since 2012. 2016 was the first model year they were brought to North America from that plant however. Apparently the high demand worldwide coupled with the fallout from Dieselgate has really put some stress on the Sprinter builds. Of note: these 2016s Sprinters are officially the very first Argentine assembled vehicle sold in the USA. VIN starts with an '8'. MB has had the plant there since 1951, so I am hoping they have good QC.

The Eurovan's best bet would be to go to someone who is interested in doing a minor camper conversion of some sort. Take the lift out, reconfigure and build a nice camper interior aft of the front seats, etc. It is a solid platform, and the T3 (Vanagon) scene is INCREDIBLY strong right now, with the T4s slowly starting to pick up. I don't think I'll have any problem selling it. Other than the sub par repaint, it is in pretty good overall shape. Runs and drives excellent.

Eurovan is officially for sale. $4500 but am open to offers. Runs great, can be driven anywhere. We just put over 500 miles on it in the last week. Sprinter's lift will be installed Monday-Wednesday of next week.

I recall you mentioned you got the dual AC blowing nice and cold last year, right?

-J

It works, yes, BUT... something in the HVAC case makes it difficult to move the lever all the way to cold, like maybe an ink pen or something fell down in there? Been that way since I got it. It is starting to lose some dash foam, so I think that would be something that needs to be addressed soon. The reason the A/C did not work well before was the left fan series resistor was bad, so that fan never came on. They both work now.

This van needs some TLC, which is why I want to find it an enthusiast, it is not something that someone could just jump in and carry on. If anyone is interested I can give a more detailed description of all the good and bad.

Sorry for the hijack but I'd like to meet with some LV tdi locals to go over my car. Right now I'm battling an over boost issue and my speedometer just died. I've done some research on both but before I start turning wrenches I'd like to meet up with you guys.